by Dave Rudden
Denizen dragged down the neck of his robe to reveal the strap of the sheath. Vivian had beaten the Three to death with a shard of a stone Malleus hammer, which she’d then ground down and polished into a knapped stone blade for him. It was a very Vivian gift to give. It was also very like his mother to make sure that they were armed before they had a conversation.
‘Good,’ she said. There was the tiniest flush of pink in her cheeks. ‘I … didn’t want to miss your Glimpse.’
‘Oh! Em …’
‘Not that I thought you weren’t going to make the right choice,’ she said quickly.
‘No, of course!’ Denizen said just as quickly, and then they both looked at the floor until, inevitably, his eyes were drawn back to Mercy.
She looked so tired. Gone was the artillery-strike anger of their first meeting, or the diamond calm she’d displayed when wielding that same stone knife to free him from the Redemptress. Now that hand was clutched, flickering and charred, to her chest, and there were phantasmagorical shifts of colour around her eyes, the way a human’s skin might flush after crying.
‘Denizen.’
He dragged his gaze away from Mercy. ‘What?’
Denizen’s mother had very few expressions. This one’s meaning was very clear.
‘I’m over it,’ he said quietly. The walls in his head were high and skin-stealingly cold. ‘Really.’
She nodded. ‘OK.’
Greaves repeated his question. ‘What do you mean, fugitive?’
I am a refugee. I am a fugitive. I am unsafe in my realm.
‘I don’t understand,’ Greaves said. ‘You’re the King’s daughter. When you were in danger before, he nearly tore this world apart looking for you. People died.’
The map of Daybreak set into the wall of Greaves’s office was the first mosaic Denizen had seen here that didn’t depict war and death. Denizen liked maps. He found them calming. And tracing the delicately labelled tiles meant he didn’t have to look at Mercy right now.
I know they did.
‘Then why would he abandon you now?’
Mercy barely seemed to notice the armoury surrounding her, as if all her fear was reserved for something else.
‘Answer me,’ Greaves snapped, and Denizen jumped.
He’d never seen the Palatine like this. Self-control was as crucial to a Knight as practising with a blade and, normally, the Palatine shuffled emotions like cards in a deck, playing both his hand and everyone else’s to his own best advantage.
But there was an openness now, a clumsiness. Denizen could see glimpses of the truth beneath, and it chilled him to his core.
Greaves was frightened.
Finally, Mercy raised her head.
My father was challenged for rule of the Tenebrae and he … he lost. The reign of the Endless King is over.
For once, it was her words rather than her Tenebrous voice that froze Denizen’s heart.
The reign of the Endless King is over.
‘But it’s the …’ Greaves’s voice was incredulous. ‘It’s the Endless King.’
I know.
The Palatine shook his head. ‘We don’t have time for games –’
I KNOW THAT!
They all went down beneath a barrage of sound. Greaves disappeared behind his desk, Vivian dropped to one knee, and only her hand on his arm stopped Denizen’s feet leaving the ground. Blades alternately froze and softened as Mercy flared, her voice bursting across them like winter and summer in a single breath.
And then that terrifying avatar was gone, and a translucent girl stood there again, one hand clasped across her heart.
I know that.
‘Then let us help you.’
Denizen’s voice was soft, almost a plea. And then, after an eternity, she nodded, and Denizen could almost see patterns shifting inside her, the way you could be tricked into seeing meaning in fire or cloud.
We are not meant for love. We are creatures of will, and that will must be selfish. When you grow up in the shadow of the omniverse, it is all you can do to cling on to yourself. That is why we are changeable. That is why so many of us are mad.
That is why my father was so intoxicating. Traveller, warlord, thief – the Tenebrous who’d Breached a thousand worlds, the Tenebrous who’d stolen a sun. He never spoke of its source, but, when he fixed that jewel of flame in the sky, he changed our world, instead of being changed.
She sounded very proud.
He ruled for millennia by sheer force of will, by undeniable skill and fury. He made himself King, and we could do naught but accept.
‘It’s not a name,’ Vivian said suddenly. ‘It’s a boast.’
Mercy smiled wanly.
It was a promise. I am Endless.
Her smile vanished.
And then I was taken, and for the first time the King knew fear. Fear for me. Fear for my loss. And by the time Denizen saved me … it was too late.
Denizen thought of the fragile fortress in his head, the battle to keep his worries under control, and imagined a mind so ancient and powerful that it could hold an entire world in sway …
… and then imagined fear creeping in like rust, darkening doorways and chewing through foundations. The horror it must have felt. The doubt.
It consumed him. Withered him. Faded him. The command he needed to keep your world safe –
‘Safe?’ Grey snapped. ‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Grey –’ Greaves began, but Grey cut him off.
‘The battles we’ve fought. The people we’ve lost. And you talk of safety?’
Mercy’s eyes blazed.
You have no idea how bad things would be without him. You think you’ve seen the worst of our realm? Mere renegades, beasts – a fraction of what the Tenebrae holds. You have no idea what real war is.
But I fear you’re about to find out.
As a rule, Tenebrous did not have rules. Not in their shape, their powers, or the way they hurt people. But the Endless King did have rules, or at least a sense of honour. He was known. Denizen had no head for tactics, but Abigail did and, as a rising wind shook the windows in their frames, he remembered something she had once said.
Unknown quantities, Denizen. That’s what kills you.
I’ve spent months speaking with my father’s voice, playing factions against each other, trying to maintain …
The Concilium. A display of command so daring that of course the Forever Court would have believed it to come from the King. It had even outed a traitor, and revealed the King’s hand in the creation of the Order itself.
You mind your house, I’ll mind mine.
Mercy’s sigh sounded like feathers falling.
But they came anyway. Usurpers. Wretches. Sharks, smelling blood in the water. A nightmare, a betrayer and a …
Her voice trembled.
They cast my father down and I do not … I do not know where he is. The throne at the heart of the Tenebrae lies empty, and now the Usurpers must prove themselves before my people so a new King can rise.
Denizen leaned forward, ignoring Vivian’s sharp look.
‘But you’re his daughter! Can’t you –’
Mercy shook her head. Not for us the messiness of your world, with its bloodlines and child kings. A ruler of the Tenebrous must be unassailable in will, or be eaten alive.
Sheets of rain were drumming against the windows. There was just enough space in Denizen’s head to briefly feel sympathy for the Neophytes out there – what even are night exercises? – but that led to thinking of earlier, and that led to –
Sacred ground.
Greaves got there before him.
‘Triple the guard around the Glimpse,’ the Palatine snapped at the Knight by his side. ‘As many Mallei as we can spare. And –’
‘Wait.’
They all turned to Vivian. In the flickering candlelight, she looked less human than Mercy, a grave and graven goddess of war.
Her voice was a hiss. ‘Prove themselves how?’
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Tenebrous were harder to read than Knights, but Denizen had practice, and, even though hers was a face of ever-changing light, he could read Mercy’s shame. She held out her one good hand, not to Greaves, not to Vivian, but to Denizen.
I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
‘Sir?’
The Knight who Greaves had spoken to held up her phone. What spilled forth was a dead growl of defeated technology, echoing far louder than the speaker should allow. Hands went to pockets, flicked light from screens, and one by one the drones rose like a hive of dying bees –
And a raindrop hit the window hard enough to leave a spiralling crack. Slowly, very slowly, Denizen and Vivian turned to watch it inch sluggishly down the glass.
The raindrop was black.
Vivian bolted for the window, the rest of them a second’s breath behind. Beyond was Adumbral, laid out in shadow and candlelight, the view so spectacular that Denizen could not even bring himself to feel nauseous. The sky was the colour of a new bruise, the moon huge and scarred by falling rain.
I’m sorry, Mercy whispered. I –
Whatever she had been about to say was lost as Daybreak shivered like a struck bell. Swords fell from the walls to clatter against flagstones. Hangings detached themselves, the victories of long-dead Knights folding themselves into anonymous cloth. Windows came apart in waterfalls of glass.
Denizen had been lost in Daybreak. He’d stood at its highest point. He knew exactly how big it was. He shouldn’t have been able to feel it sway.
Thunder cracked pain across his eardrums, and with it came despair, a nausea of the soul, bypassing Denizen’s senses to assault his mind. If the Breach from yesterday had been a probing needle then this was an avalanche, squeezing Denizen’s eyes in his sockets, curdling the blood in his veins.
Knights staggered. One vomited against the back of her hand. One of Grey’s hands was spasming open and closed and he didn’t seem to be able to make it stop.
‘But the candlewards –’ Greaves’s eyes were as wide as a child’s. ‘They –’
Stop a Tenebrous Breaching inside the city. Not from above. Mercy’s voice was forlorn. You know, it’s actually quite clever.
And maybe someone, somewhere would have cut Denizen some slack. The reek of the Tenebrae, revelations, an uprising – there was a lot going on. He was fourteen years old. The room was comprised entirely of people who had more experience of situations like this.
But, in that moment, he knew he’d never forgive himself for how long it took to turn to Greaves and snarl, ‘Palatine!’
It took the man an eternity to focus. ‘What?’
Horror carried Denizen’s voice over the wind and the rain and the wrongness.
‘Night exercises.’
10
Army of One
Neophytes were trained to be self-reliant. When the ranking Malleus couldn’t be contacted, when you were separated from your cadre and the enemy adapted … you should too.
Abigail wondered if the Knights were regretting that carefully cultivated independence now.
‘Tell us what’s happening!’
‘What is the point of –’
‘We can be trusted! We need to know –’
The truck wound through candlelit streets, and, as they left Daybreak, the teenagers did exactly as they had been trained – using their initiative, trying different routes of attack –
‘Isn’t telling us an opportunity for us to learn?’
‘Was that Tenebrous made of light? I’ve never read of –’
The Knights did not reply. Two sat up front, another two riding with the Neophytes in the truck’s canvas bed: a tall Sikh man with olive skin and a dark blue turban, and their French tutor, Madame Adler, the freckled planes of her face stark beneath a veil of black-and-silver hair.
Both of them had the exact same expression.
Abigail was fairly sure her expression was similar. Mercy.
Abigail had met the Endless King’s daughter precisely once, on a hillside at dawn, after one of the most terrifying and exhausting nights of her life. They’d little more than exchanged a glance, but that had been enough to set Mercy apart from every other Tenebrous she had ever faced.
They hadn’t been trying to kill each other, for a start. And Mercy spoke of peace, and had risked her life to save Denizen, something Abigail would never have believed of a Tenebrous before.
But the one lesson drilled into Abigail from the day she’d learned the word Tenebrous was that when it came to Those Who Walked Under Unlit Skies you couldn’t trust your senses. That was fundamental. That was how you tracked them. That was the trail they left behind.
And in Mercy’s trail …
Weeks desperately searching through old books while blood-spattered reports crowded Vivian’s desk. Ravaging Pursuivants searching for a word that had never before sat in a Tenebrous’s mouth. Abigail’s father, and the pained smile as he assured her he’d walk again.
Across from her, on a rough metal bench, Hagen was running a finger along the scars on his hands. Left to right, tip to tip, eyes closed as if deciphering Braille. Abigail thought back to his story in the Neophytes’ common room.
Why would they speak of mercy, when they showed us none?
Maybe it was for the best that they’d been sent away.
‘He’ll be fine,’ Simon whispered beside her. ‘Won’t he?’
She turned back to stare at the lighthouse, looming like a canine in Adumbral’s ravaged gum. Abigail tried to draw strength from its battlements. Daybreak was impregnable. The whole city was.
At least until Mercy walked in.
‘Of course he will,’ Abigail said. ‘Forget the Knights, Vivian’s there. She won’t let him get hurt.’
‘I know.’
Simon hesitated, mouth working as if probing a loose tooth.
‘It’s just that when Mercy shows up, Denizen tends to …’
Abigail shot him a sympathetic look. ‘Get dragged into things?’
Simon swallowed. ‘Yep. I think Mercy doesn’t mean any harm – she hasn’t hurt any of us. Not …’
Not directly. If it had been some great treasure that had been stolen by the Three, Abigail wouldn’t have blamed it for what had been done in its name. She wouldn’t have blamed a person. But a Tenebrous …
Hagen was still tracing his scars. Her father still walked with a limp. And you could mean well, you could try your best to do your best, and still …
Mercy might mean no harm, but that didn’t mean she didn’t bring it with her. She’d crossed over twice to the human world, and both times had been a nightmare. Maybe they hadn’t been nightmares of her making, but she heralded them, as sure as the ticking of a bomb.
Adler rapped the back of the driver’s seat and the truck pulled to a stop. They were in a plaza amid a distressingly organic tangle of lanes and pathways. Buildings had twisted against themselves here, as if trying to escape.
The Knights who had been sitting up front – a wrinkled, Cost-swathed man with a goatish sprig of beard, and a Malleus named Coiled who had once worked with her father – opened the back of the truck for the Neophytes to disembark.
Empty windows gaped down as the teenagers formed up. The air was cool but not cold. Clouds scudded across the sky, almost too fast to be real. There was a hard-edged pressure to the air, and the familiar sting of adrenalin calmed her.
Mercy had looked … desperate. And scared. Abigail didn’t like the thought of Mercy being frightened. Humans were frightened. Humans were frightened of Tenebrous and, though Denizen had shared everything he knew about her, Abigail still couldn’t quite bring herself to think of Mercy as even close to human. That wasn’t wise. It wasn’t tactical.
A drop of rain stung her nose. Abigail flinched, and then became immediately annoyed for doing so. She stopped herself rubbing the soreness away, but around her the others were also shrugging away drops, pulling up hoods and straightening sleeves.
You’d t
hink after a year in Ireland I’d be used to rain. Not that it had been the first rainy place she’d lived – before the penetrating slyness of Irish rain there had been the shocking skin-patter of Indian monsoons and the everywhere-wet of Burmese humidity. Why should this be any –
Abigail’s stomach heaved as a drop came down, exploding on her outstretched hand. She stared at the oily black sheen, bright with the water with which it would not mix. They separated even as she watched, the darkness launching itself into the air as a spiral of smoke.
Adler’s voice was a roar. ‘BREACH!’
Suddenly they were all back to back, Simon’s knobbed shoulder blades pressing into the back of her head. Knights circled them, turning shoulders and closing gaps; the goatish man grabbed Ed by the scruff of the neck and pressed him into the throng.
The rain was coming harder now, biting and stinging like wasps.
‘Find cover!’ the Sikh Knight called.
They ran, jerking and hissing as the wind flung rain into faces and under hoods. Simon ran with his hands clasped over his head. A boy she hadn’t spoken to yet fell with a yelp, and two others stopped to pick him up by the shoulders.
And through it all, through the sudden panic and the pain, came the gut-squeezing, eye-watering pressure of the universe bending out of shape. Questions came down with the rain – a Breach? Here? – but speculation was dead weight and she left it behind.
They fell into an open doorway just as a cloudburst tore the air to shreds, cracking cobbles with shattering pops. Even on the ground floor, Abigail could hear the roof strain under the assault. What would happen if it collapsed?
How do we fight this? How did you fight the sky?
The Tenebrae furred her nerves, prickled her skin. Bodies banged off her, wide eyes in soaked hoods, and, despite their experience, their training, their iron and the light streaking intermittently through their skin, the Neophytes didn’t look like Knights-in-training at all.
They looked like children hiding from something far bigger than themselves.
I can teach you, but not prepare you.
Shut up, Abigail thought ferociously.
I can train you, but training only takes you to the edge of the darkness, and not a single step more.